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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Agrarian Reform and the Persistence of Land Fragmentation in Rural Ethiopia |
Authors: | Mengistu Woube Sjöberg, Örjan |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | African Rural and Urban Studies |
Volume: | 1 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 115-148 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ethiopia |
Subjects: | land law Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Politics and Government Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
Abstract: | The radical land reform adopted in Ethiopia following the 1974 revolution, which abolished private ownership of rural land, did not solve one of the major problems of the prereform period, namely land fragmentation. This paper examines the reasons for the persistence of land fragmentation in Ethiopia, based on the results of a field survey carried out among 400 respondents in Dejen and Wolmera districts in the regions of Gojjam and Shewa during the first half of the 1980s, and followed up on several occasions through early 1994. A number of factors may be said to reinforce land fragmentation and even increase its intensity. These include the character of the physical environment, the growing number of livestock, population dynamics and the implementation of land redistribution, the impact of agricultural producer cooperatives, and the settlement pattern. A particularly important feature of these factors is their interrelatedness. There is a chance that the policy advanced by the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) which came to power in 1991, which stresses State ownership of land in combination with leaseholds rather than collectivization, may consolidate land in limited areas. However, there is no guarantee that it will reduce the problem of land degradation. The basic problem of undefined land rights, as well as the inconsistency between short-term needs and long-term sustainability, persist. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |